


The Devil Wore Blue, Part I

by Hallianna



Series: The Detective and the Vault Dweller [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, hancock thinks nina needs to get a move on with nick, maccready has no idea what's going on, nina has a secret, the slowest burn ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7477197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hallianna/pseuds/Hallianna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nina blows up some Super Mutants and gets questioned by Hancock; a settlement in dire need; Nick discovers a secret of Nina’s</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil Wore Blue, Part I

_The devil wore blue and it looked like the most gorgeous dame he’d ever seen. Blue dress, blue heels, brown hair swung over one shoulder, and bright red lips. **  
**_

_He knew sin.  Most fellas did.  But she looked like she’d sinned again and again and the devil had finally given up and let her take his throne._

_“I hope I’m not in the wrong place,” she said, voice smoky and low.  It rattled him instantly._

_He kicked his feet up on his desk and motioned her inside with a hand.  The cigarette balancing between his fingertips winked red hot in the semi-darkness. “You looking for someone, doll?”_

_She stepped inside, heels clicking against his worn floorboards.  “Missing people are your specialty, aren’t they Mr. Valentine?”_

_He smiled at that.  He’d made quite the name for himself over the years, if her appearance in his doorway meant anything.  “They sure are.”  He waved at the chair across from him.  “Let’s talk.”_

_She sat down, digging in her purse for cigarettes.  He leaned over the desk, feet dropping with a loud thunk, and handed her one from his pack.  “Got a light?”_

_His lighter appeared in his hands and she bent forward to catch the flame. “Now,” he said, settling back in his chair.  “Who’s missing and when did they disappear?”_

* * *

“So what’s going on between you two?”

Nina ducked as a shot rang out overhead.  “Not now, Hancock,” she hissed. “Did you miss the part where we’re being shot at?”

The ghoul shrugged.  “It’s the Commonwealth, sister.  Everyone gets shot at.”

Nina growled in frustration but had to stop from replying.  The shots had stopped and she thrust her chin forward.  “Go, go!”

Hancock leading, they ran along the high wall of the hospital.  They needed to get in there and fast, but with at least ten Super Mutants standing between them and the door, their odds weren’t looking so good.

He stopped so abruptly she almost collided with him.  “What the hell?” she hissed.

He grinned at her, the edge of a packet of Mentats between his teeth.  “Gotta arm up.  Super Mutants are a bitch.”

Nina held her tongue.  She was not a fan of the drugs of the Commonwealth. She got more than a fair share of shit from Cait about her squeamishness, but she just couldn’t.  She’d seen addiction take her father, the grief nearly take her mother, and leave her grandmother to raise a headstrong, do-gooder of a granddaughter.

Chems didn’t interest her.  Sure she’d swig a beer or do a shot of vodka, but never in excess.  The demons that haunted her footsteps were always a little too close for comfort, even two hundred years and one bomb later.

“You want?” he asked, already pulling another packet from one of his many pockets.

She shook her head. “No thanks.”

He grinned at her, black eyes gleaming. “So polite.  Well, if you change your mind….”

She held up a hand, felt awkward, and put it on top of her gun to pull back the hammer.  “I won’t.”

“Suit yourself, sister.  It’s a hell of a high.”

She grunted. “Let’s just get rid of them and get the stimpaks and supplies. Tenpines Bluff needs them badly.”

His face sobered and he pulled out another gun.  “Fair point.  Let’s get to it, then.”

Nina peeked over his shoulder and around the wall hiding them.  “I’ve got one, two, three on the front entrance and - shit.”

Hancock nudged her out of the way.  “It can’t be that bad….well, shit.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him.  “Told you.”

He gripped both guns in his hands and said, “Suicider.  Damn.”  He took a deep breath, then at the top of his lungs yelled, “I’m coming for you, assholes!”

He dashed around the barricade, firing both guns.  Nina yelled, trying to follow. “Hancock, what the fu-”

Shots rang all around them, pinging off abandoned cars and rusted streetlights.  Nina grappled with her bag, hand closing around a grenade.  She pulled the pin with her teeth and screamed, “Bastards!”, while chucking the thing with the arm of a pro.

The grenade soared over them, landing square in the middle of a triangle of super mutant suicider, overlord, and soldier.

“Down!” Hancock jumped over her, wrapping a hand into her belt and pulling her with him.

They tumbled onto broken concrete and rebar, dust and debris filling the air. Nina felt the heat wave from multiple blasts and her eyes watered.  She coughed and braced herself on her forearms.  “Hancock?”

“I’m here,” he groaned, rolling next to her.  “Damn, where’d you get that arm?”

Nina smiled as she remembered Nick chucking a Giddyup Buttercup leg a few weeks back.  “No idea.”

“Huh.  And here I thought a certain synth showed you a thing or two.”. He nudged her shoulder with his.  “Looks like we’re clear.  Nice job.”

Nina swiveled her head and saw blood splattered on everything.  The hospital’s front door, its columns, steps, and even trails of it on the road.  

“Maybe next time no grenades.  And a warning before you go off like that,” she said dryly.  “The ones inside had to have heard the blast.  We’d better be ready.”

Hancock’s comment about Nick rattled around in her mind as they snuck through the building, sniping Super Mutants around corners and off stairways. Hancock chuckled dark and low every time either one of them made a particularly tricky shot.  

He tore through another pack of Mentats while they hunted, eyes going glassy with each tablet.  And every time, he offered them to her and she politely turned him down.  “I know you’re just being -”

Hancock huffed out a laugh and punched the elevator button.  “What?  Nice?” He straightened his coat by tugging on the ratty lapels.  “Sister, there isn’t a nice thing about me.”

The elevator chimed and they stepped inside.  Their guns were still out but now that the building was clear and their packs were full of stimpaks, Med-X, Radaway, and Rad-X, Nina didn’t feel as tense.  Tenpines needed these supplies badly and when she’d mentioned the need to Hancock, the hospital had been his suggestion.

And she reminded him of this.  He laughed again.  “Helpin’ people isn’t nice. It’s necessary.  They need help, so we’re helpin’.  Nice doesn’t get you shit out here.”

Nina didn’t see the difference, but let it go.  She liked Hancock, chem use aside.  It wasn’t her business what he did or inhaled or ingested.  He provided a much needed gun, offered protection to the settlers, and clearly cared.

He might not think he was nice, but she believed he was.

“So,” he drawled as they walked out of the main doors and back into the bright sunshine.  “About Nick….”

She whirled to face him.  “What about him?”

He tapped out a cigarette from the crushed pack he always carried around, lit it, then offered it to her.  She took it and waited until he lit another one before repeating her question.  He smiled and said, “You really think people haven’t noticed the….connection between you two?”

Nina crossed her arms and flicked ash off the end of her cigarette.  The ash landed on her boot.  “Nick is a friend.”

Hancock tapped his face roughly where the side of his nose would be, grin growing.  “Really?  That’s it?”

“Yes.”

He drew long and hard on the cigarette then flicked the butt into some nearby bushes.  “If you say so.”

* * *

_“So what’s his name?”_

_The devil in the blue dress froze but only for a moment.  A slow smile crept over face as she said, “Who said it’s a man?”_

_“Doll, for a woman like you, it’s always a man,” Valentine replied, snuffing out his cigarette in a nearby ashtray._

_She sat up straighter and crossed her legs.  “That’s a pretty big assumption, Detective.”_

_“Not an assumption.  An observation after a shitload of cases just like this.”  He drew a circle in the air around her face.  “Beautiful dame comes to me, wants me to find the missing boyfriend or husband.  Chances are he’s shacked up with someone else and the gal doesn’t want to come to terms with it. So she pays me, I find him, and her heart breaks.  Case closed.”_

_She huffed.  “Some detective you are.  I don’t know why I’m wasting my time with you.”_

_He didn’t want her to leave. She was the best thing that had walked into his office in….ever.  And he hated that he had to deliver such a hard reality to her, but a quality girl like her needed to know upfront what would happen._

_She cracked the door open and he jumped up.  “Don’t you think you’re being hasty?” he asked as he came up behind her._

_She didn’t turn around.  “I don’t.”_

_But she didn’t leave.  “Got doubts, doll?” he said, and then he leaned over her and pushed the door shut.  “I was just bein’ upfront is all.  I wasn’t trying to insult you.”_

_She dropped her head and when she spoke, her voice was soft.  Teary.  “It’s not a man.  It’s my son.”_

_Valentine reeled like he’d been slapped.  “Shit.”_

_“An apropos outburst, Detective.”_

_He stepped back, giving her space.  She walked back to the chair and sat down, her mood now very different.  “I need you to find my son,” she said, eyes shining.  “He was taken and I don’t know where he is.”_

_The devil did indeed walk into his office.  Not with a smile and swish of her tail, but with a challenge._

_Find my son._

* * *

The welcoming committee they received upon reaching Tenpines Bluff was a somber affair.  Mary, the de facto leader of the settlement, instantly drew her aside.  “We’ve been trying to do with what we had,” the older woman said in a low voice.  “But that last attack left a bunch of people with shrapnel wounds, things we didn’t see until later.”  She ducked her head and her eyes dropped to the ground.  “And Anna isn’t doing well.”

Nina felt her breath catch.  Anna was eight years old, a smiling, happy little girl who had given her a bouquet of hubflowers when she and Piper had first shown up.  Nina had kept one of the flowers and pressed it between the pages of a burnt book. The flower now hung above her bed; a reminder that all was not ugly or lost in the Commonwealth.

Anna had caught a fever a few weeks ago and never rallied.  She grew pale and sunken, her little body withering to nothing as they could barely force broth down her throat.

“Is she -” Nina started to ask as she wrung her hands.

Mary shook her head.  “I don’t know.”  They both turned to see Hancock handing their haul from the hospital to Raul, the designated settlement healer. “Raul’s been with her night and day but the man needs a break.”  She gave a small smile.  “But those supplies you brought back…that might just save her life.”

Nina watched the tired, bedraggled parade of settlers line up by Raul and get stimpaks.  Med-X went to those who themselves had injuries or had family who were wounded; bandages and ice packs were given to those with aches and pains.

Her heart broke.  When a settlement was happy, it showed.  Settlers would scrap and save anything they could find and string together lights, hang decorations, leave little notes of thanks strewn around their homes.  But Tenpines Bluff had suffered, more than many.  And their homes and faces showed that suffering, with paint jobs left unfinished, crops barely tended, and clothes that would have normally been patched left ragged and torn.

No matter the fortifications they put together, the number of armed guards, or the junkyard dogs she bought, the Bluff just couldn’t get a break.  Raiders, Super Mutants, Gunners.  Then the Brotherhood of Steel trying to take their crops.  An Institute synth attack and the discovery that two of their own were Institute synths.

She didn’t know what else to do.

“I assume you heard about Anna?”

Nina sighed, felt the weight of it in her lungs.  She turned to see Nick standing behind her, cigarette in one hand, gun in the other.  Nick and a few others had offered to help guard the settlement as they got back on their feet.  But even Nick, who was a good shot and had a great instinct for combat, couldn’t fend off entire hordes of attackers on his own.

“Yeah,” she replied forlornly.  “If she dies -”

“Hey,” he said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder.  “Don’t think that like.”

She dashed a hand across her face.  “How can I not?  That little girl might die.”

 _Like my little boy might be dead._  She didn’t say it but they both thought it.

Nina found herself wrapped in Nick’s arms. His warmth seeped into her and she could hear the tiny whirs and clicks of his motors and servos working.  It was just as comforting as a heartbeat, those little signs of life.  Of sentience.

“Why do you always know what to do?” she said into his shoulder, not daring to look up and see what kind of spectacle they were causing.

“I don’t,” he confessed, his words brushing her ear.  “I just do what seems right.”

She snorted and he felt the staccato rise and fall of her shoulders.  “Then you do an awful lot of that.”

The blush of her praise spread through him.  “Not just me, sweetheart.  It starts with you.”  She raised her head and he put a finger under her chin, lifting it up until they were eye to eye.  “This all starts with you.  Where do you think they’d be if you hadn’t come along?”

Nina was speechless.  His simple statement carried wisdom and burden.  “I know,” he continued, pulling back even more to see her better.  “You’ve done something here.  You’ve brought people together.  Hell of an accomplishment.”

“I’m not building a resume,” she growled, peeling her body from his.  She was so angry, so upset, and the waves of those emotions threatened to drop her to her knees.  It had just been her son, one missing boy in a horrible future where she had no real place.  

_Just been her son_

And along the way, she’d become the leader of a militia intent on keeping peace in the Commonwealth; had joined a rebel faction who wanted to save synths because they believed (like she did) that they deserved freedom and autonomy; and had met the most colorful and frustrating and honest people she’d ever known.

All because her son had been taken and her husband murdered and she’d woken up two hundred years out of her time, after the apocalypse had ended.

“I either have the worst or strangest kind of luck,” she said flatly.  Nick looked at her questioningly and she said, “I go to find my son and I end up with a ghoul who’s mayor of a town, a mouthy reporter, a hired gun, a cage fighter, a militia lieutenant, a spy, and you.”  She frowned - not at him, at herself.  “I’m sorry I snapped.”

“Anyone would, the pressure you’re under,” he said smoothly, not offended in the least.

She was grateful to him for his unwavering understanding.  “I need to go see Anna.”

He backed up, letting her pass.  “Sure, sure.  Just uh…yell if you need anything.  I’m going walk the perimeter.”

Nina knew she could do this on her own, face a sick child who would remind her so much of Shaun.  She could be strong, she could be the unbroken back everyone else leaned on.

But she couldn’t do it without Nick.

“Hey,” she said, voice rough, “would you come with me instead?”  When he hesitated mid-step, she said hurriedly, “I don’t want to do this alone.”

He looked at her severely for a moment and Nina swore she heard him processing - her, the situation, the sick child in a bed just steps away. “Wouldn’t make you,” he said, voice rough.  And he followed her into Anna’s little room off the main shelter.

From the edge of the settlement, Hancock took a drag on his cigarette and shook his head.  “Oh yeah, nothing going on there.”

“Hancock!  How’s the most awesome ghoul ever?”

Hancock grinned and turned to see MacCready walking toward him.  “What’s up, MacCready?  Guard duty going okay?”

The young man came to stand shoulder to shoulder next to the ghoul, stealing a cigarette and his lighter in the process.  “You know.  Raiders.  Gunners.”

Hancock blew smoke into a ring and it floated above them for a moment then disappeared.  “So, just another day in the Commonwealth.”

MacCready nodded.  “I saw Nina’s back.  You two have fun at the hospital?”

Hancock shrugged, but his tone implied something else.  “She blew up a bunch of Super Mutants with a grenade.”  He held up a finger.

MacCready’s jaw dropped, his cigarette barely clinging to his lower lip.  “One grenade?”

“One grenade.”. Another smoke ring.  “Sexiest thing I’ve seen in some time. Course, I’m not the focus of her attention, so my feelings are a bit one-sided.”

MacCready frowned.  “What are you talking about?”

He nodded to the main shelter.  “You didn’t see that?”

“No.  What?”

Hancock chuckled.  “Nina and Nick.”

MacCready’s frowned deepened and he rubbed a hand along his jaw.  “Nina and Nick?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“How about you spit it out?”

Hancock flicked his cigarette butt into the dry grass at their feet.  “Nina.  And Nick.  There’s a …thing there. Between them.”. He slung an arm around MacCready’s shoulders.  “Come on, brother, you aren’t that thick.”

Recognition dawned on the man’s face, much to Hancock’s delight. “Shi…are you serious with me right now?”

“Yeah.”

MacCready crossed his arms, cigarette forgotten between his fingertips.  “No way.  She’s a….well, she’s Nina.”

The ghoul couldn’t stop his grin from spreading. “She’s what?  Human?”  He brushed his free hand down his coat.  “That hasn’t exactly kept her from checking out my ass.”  MacCready snorted at his ego but Hancock just kept smiling.  “And her being human means jack shit.  She’s got a thing for him, he’s got a thing for her. Plain as day.”

“You’re wrong.”  A look of uncertainty crossed MacCready’s face but he stood taller as he repeated, “Nope, you’re wrong.”

Hancock fumbled in his pockets for another cigarette and came up empty. He grunted in disappointment.  “I’m not.  Just keep your eyes on them when we get back to Sanctuary.  I guarantee there will be fireworks.  There’s no way they don’t hit the bed.”

MacCready laughed, but it was an uncomfortable sound.  “How would that even work?”  He shook his head.  “You know what, I’ve got to patrol.  See you around, Hancock.”

“Yeah, see ya.”  

He knew he was right.  Nina talked too fondly and far too much about the detective.  And Nick, in his way, clammed up whenever anyone brought up the subject of Nina.  He might be crude and a drugged-out ghoul prone to acts of violence, but he knew that something as honest and true as affection between two people was something to cherish.  

Life was too hard in the Commonwealth to take something like love for granted.

And he was really hoping it was Nina who made the first move.    


* * *

_Two weeks and no leads later_

_“Please tell me you asked me here to give me good news,” she said as she worried a handkerchief between her hands._

_Valetine sighed and tossed a file down on his desk.  She looked good, she always did, but her grief showed in little ways.  An upturned cuff on her sharp black jacket.  The toes of her heels scuffed.  Makeup too dewey to be done purposefully.  “Is there anything else you can remember from the night of the kidnapping?  Because what few leads I had turned into nothing and I’m grasping at straws here.”_

_She sank into the chair by his desk, hand and handkerchief flitting to her mouth.  She shook her head, grief filling her eyes with tears.  “Nothing?” she said softly.  “All this time and you don’t have anything?”_

_Her last word pitched high with desperation and Valentine winced.  Honestly at this point, he felt like a sham.  He couldn’t find one missing kid in the city.  He’d tracked down straying spouses and missing politicians and every other kind of case out there._

_But one missing kid was turning out to be his biggest problem._

_She bit her lip and his gut twisted.  He moved his chair next to her and took her hands into his.  “Honestly, this isn’t an easy case.  No witnesses, other than what you saw through the window.  No ransom.  And no trace of your little boy -”_

_She sobbed, a choking of air and grief lodged in her lungs that spilled out in a heartbreaking sound.  “I won’t give up,” he said, his tone stronger than he’d meant.  “I’m not giving up on you or him.  I’ll find your little boy.  But I need a favor from you.”_

_“Anything.  Anything you want.”_

_He pulled the photo she’d given him of the boy from his pocket and put it in her palm.  “Get this on the news.  I know I said to avoid them but that was when we didn’t want to make a spectacle and scare off any ransom demands.”_

_Her eyes were misty as she looked up at him.  “And now?”_

_He curled her fingers over the photo.  “Now we’re desperate.”_

* * *

Nina stretched and the rickety desk chair creaked underneath her.  She pulled the finished page from the typewriter and smiled at what she’d written.  It was only a first draft and she was rusty, but it was nice to spend a little time on an old hobby.

When times had been slow at the law office, writing had supplemented her income.  She’d answered an ad to write dime novels and had, somehow, gotten a manuscript past the editors.  She’d even had several novels published but The Devil Wore A Blue Dress had been her breakout hit.

After that book and the royalties that came from it, she’d even contemplated going full time with her writing.  It was a decision she’d been mulling while pregnant with Shaun.

Now, writing was more than a way to make some quick money.  It was a way out for all her thoughts and all the stresses of life in the Commonwealth.  She wasn’t trying to rewrite The Devil Wore A Blue Dress, but write the version of it that fit this new life.  The fact that she clearly imagined herself and Nick as the leads, with the story of her missing son the plot, was probably a bit messed up.

It was either this, or find more creative, potentially destructive ways to deal with her frustrations.  And the ongoing search for her son wasn’t the only thing on her mind.

But one burden had lifted from her.  She’d gotten word earlier that day that Anna at Tenpines Bluff was coming around.  Several doses of Med-X had helped, but Mary said it was nothing short of a miracle that the little girl had basically risen from the dead.  She was sitting up, talking, even eating again.

Nina didn’t believe in God, never had.  But while some tiny part of her scoffed at the idea of miracles, she didn’t push aside the hope that welled inside her at the news of Anna’s recovery.

She went to bed with that hope sitting near her heart, making her journey to slumber a bit easier.  Dogmeat hopped up beside her and she flung an arm over him, snuggling into his warm fur.

She didn’t hear Nick come in or call her name.

“Nina?” he said softly as he turned the corner and came down the hallway.  When he got no response, he stepped softly over to her bedroom doorway and peeked in.

 _Pretty cute picture_ , he thought as he saw her and Dogmeat squashed together on the little bed.  The dog wasn’t asleep, so he got the full weight of the animal’s gaze.  “Good boy,” he said softly as he backed away, just happy that she was sleeping soundly with her trusty companion to guard her.

Nick sighed, feeling a sense of relief that was rare these days.  He walked back into the living room and started to go out the door when the stack of papers on her desk caught his eye.  She’d moved the desk so it sat in front of the big window.  She drank coffee there some mornings, tea or beer at nights.  I like being able to see everyone at the beginning or end of the day, she’d told him as he’d helped her move the heavy thing.  Everyone has to walk by here and I can see them and know they’re okay.

_Classic Nina.  Always thinking of everyone else, even when her world’s falling apart._

But the typewriter on the desk was new.  Curiosity hitting him hard, he sat down in her chair.  If she wanted to keep it secret, she would have hidden it somewhere.  So he pulled the stack to him and began to read.


End file.
